A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer...

I don’t recall ever crying on Christmas until this year. The closest I came was probably the year I turned 11 and my brother got a boom box and I got Christmas dishes. That was the same year I met Beth. It was my first rafting trip, the summer before I would enter middle school. A poorly timed practical joke pulled on our raft by Beth’s raft almost left Beth floating down a class 4 rapid, but I anchored her to the side of our boat and we made it to the side of the Rouge River before Blossom Bar. Sorry these pictures look weird - the computer wouldn't let me put them in except in a bitmap format....the one on the left was taken in 1996 on a Cause beach trip (my sixth grade year) and the one on the right was taken in 2003 on the high school senior retreat. When I entered the middle school youth group a few months later, Beth was there again. It’s always fun when you already have a history with the cool 23-year-old leader. To say that I was an annoying middle school student would be a...

Have you ever seen someone in need of help you couldn't supply? Yesterday, I was waiting for my checks to be cashed in the drive through at MaPS Credit Union when I saw a guy whose car had obviously died in a very inconvenient place. He was on a connector road, where no one seemed to be driving by, and to top it off, he was trying to push his car uphill into the closest parking lot. He was trying to steer his car and push at the same time, which was not going well. A few cars drove by, ignoring the obvious need. I felt almost as helpless. There I was...seven months pregnant and entirely incapable of pushing a car up a hill...nevermind the fact that I was alone, and helping a random guy by myself probably wouldn't be the smartest idea. But still...I felt like I was the only one who really noticed this 30-year-old frumpy looking guy straining to push his beat up car. Every time a car would pass, he seemed to expect some kind of help, but the people just kept driving by. Sometimes...

Domestic I am not, but occasionally I try my hand at something my mom always made look easy. First it was caramel corn (which is still NOT easy) and last week, it was apple pie. Getting my husband to eat fruit is a chore in itself, but he ate as much of this pie as possible, with some help from me, Lauren, Heather and Angela. That's what I call success!! This is our first Christmas as homeowners, so we got to tackle the job of putting up Christmas lights ("we" meaning Bryan)! We discovered that icicle lights are extremely expensive, and lucked out to inherit some from Bryan's parents. With a two story house and no ladder, Bryan had to get creative to hang the lights (climbing out our bedroom window). Needless to say, I just took pictures from the ground because I was not getting up on that slippery roof!!